


Accidents happen

by HikariYumi



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental bed-wetting, Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Alternate Universe - Human, Bed-Wetting, Connor Deserves Happiness, Foster Care, Gen, Good Dog Sumo (Detroit: Become Human), Hank Being Awesome, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Its pretty vague, Kid Connor, Kid Fic, Mentions of Character Death, POV Hank Anderson, Protective Hank Anderson, Short One Shot, emergency foster care, hank is an emergency foster, retired Hank Anderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 09:05:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16699537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HikariYumi/pseuds/HikariYumi
Summary: Hank is an emergency foster caretaker and gets called when eight year old Connor needs a place to stay one Friday night. It’s times like this Hank is really glad that he’d started fostering.





	Accidents happen

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there!  
> After a surprising writers block I’m back with yet another dbh kidfic, this time not in my former series.  
> I don’t know why or how, but I write this thing tonight in one go. A had this idea and I wanted to write it down. So yeah.  
> It’s not big.. or really... polished or anything (as if my things ever are)... but I decided to post it anyway.
> 
> This story mentions a minor character death (Hank referring to his dead son) and implies that Connor has been abused to land in emergency foster care. How or in which extent isn’t said, Hank knows what happened but doesn’t get into it.
> 
> This is basically me remembering that trauma can lead to a child reverting a bit and wetting the bed again. I dunno, it’s the middle of the night.
> 
> As always, I don’t want to offend anyone or romantise abuse or anything. I didn’t actually do a lot of research for this one (mostly because the majority of things I’ve found online were to prevent future bed-wetting, which Hank wouldn’t use because he’s only taking care of Connor for a short while and doesn’t know if it’ll resolve itself) so if I got stuff wrong, tell me so I can either correct it or at least know better for next time.  
> Same goes for foster parenting. I don’t know how it’s handled in the US and consequently used it in my favour.
> 
> Also, I’m not a native speaker and still mess up a lot (and my lovely beta is very busy with school and work), so I’m sorry for mistakes!
> 
> ~Hikari

Maybe the most irritating thing was that Cole’s bed wasn’t empty anymore.   
Despite the switched out mattress’s and the new sheets, Hank couldn’t help but think of the simple twin bed as his son’s.

Hank was in no way regretting that he had started taking in kids as and emergency foster parent, it might even be one of the best decisions he’d ever made in his life. Still, even after a year of boys and girls staying in his son’s old bedroom for a few nights, it provoked a strange feeling.

After retiring from the police force, Hank had considered to just relax into his new free time and enjoy his life without stress and pressure. This dreamlike prospect though quickly turned out to be too dull for Hank who’s been used to lots of action during his working years.

When his former colleagues heard about him undergoing some basic training to go into emergency fostering they were, to put it mildly, startled.   
Hank was commonly known as gruff, borderline-rude and generally a man with lack of social skills. This reputation had been helped along by the fact, that most of the station hadn’t known him until after his son’s death. Admittedly the lieutenant hadn’t been the most pleasant company for a long while after that.

The department’s captain on the other hand hadn’t shared the concerns expressed by the other officers. Fowler was well aware that Hank had some empathy hidden under years of brash words and bad attitude.   
One night a few months into the new situation after a few shared drinks, he had even told Hank how happy and most importantly proud he was of him for moving on and living again.

Neither of the men acknowledged their open talk afterwards but never let themselves forget it.

Hank was happy with his decision and the way his life was going. In his youth his desire to help people had made him join the police force and even all this time later this wish was still ingrained in him.   
Despite Hank’s long time on the force, it broke his old heart a little whenever a young kid was placed with him, proving once again how much bad was out there. He couldn’t change the world anymore, but he could at least try and make sure that a few more kids were safe.

Regardless of all that Hank wasn’t really interested in anything more than emergency, or short-term fostering for reasons he would only admit to himself when the moon had long chased the sun away for the day. But that was okay, people like him were needed as well.

Prove of that was this very night when Hank had received a call well after ten, asking him if he could take on a young boy right then and there.   
Only half an hour later he had made his way to the orderlies to pick up his temporary charge.

The sight of a small figure huddled on a chair, accompanied by a social worker wasn’t new to him by all means, yet still never failed to shake up his insides uncomfortably.  
All of them were unique in their own ways, but they all were scared out of their young minds.  
With practised ease Hank filled out the necessary paperwork and listened to the boy’s story before approaching the kid for the first time.

Connor, who was a skinny eight year old, turned out to be ridiculously polite and just as stilted. Fitting to this presentation the clothes he wore looked impeccable despite the mess that had been his evening.  
Everything about the boy screamed prim and proper except for an unruly strand of hair which decidedly refused to be pushed out of his face.

“Hey there, Connor. My name is Hank and you’ll be staying with me for the night. Is that okay with you?”  
Hank was very much aware that other than him there was a substantial lack of emergency fosters in the area, but that didn’t mean he would force an already vulnerable child into going with someone they didn’t trust at all. If a kid refused him, he would do everything he could to find someplace else for them to stay. 

“Good evening, sir. Thank you for having me at such short notice.”  
The young face remained carefully blank, but the brown eyes shone with underlying emotion. Hank’s stomach turned a bit.

“Of course. Is there anything you need to do first, or are you ready to leave?  
It was the social worker who answered for Connor and handed the boy a small backpack that had to contain his belongings.  
“Great, then let’s go so you can get at least a bit of sleep tonight.”

~

Children in need of emergency fostering had experienced almost exclusively some sort of trauma.  
After all they due to their nature tended to happen on the fly, different from pre-mediated foster procedures which generally led to long-term placements. Children weren’t pulled from their families on a Friday night if there wasn’t a very good reason for it. 

Sometimes there were accidents or medical issues that made the parents unable to look after their child, sometimes it was the sudden death of a caregiver and not as unusual as it should be: abuse by the family.  
Whatever reason, the child rarely ever walked away from that without being affected by it at all.

Hank knew there was a big chance of him witnessing the child’s delayed reaction to that trauma during his stay. Most commonly it consisted of the kids being clingy, having nightmares or even showing aggressions.   
That’s why a kid’s first night was usually spent by him dozing on the living room sofa, joined by good old Sumo. That way Hank was able to snap awake at the tiniest sign of distress. 

More than once this tactic had proved effective, just like it did that night.  
Around three o’clock Hank’s brain alerted him of something out of the ordinary. Light that hadn’t been there before, spilled through the crack of the kid’s bedroom. Connor hadn’t requested any light to stay on during nighttime, so maybe the boy had woken up to go to the bathroom or something.

Hank consciously listened for any accompanying sounds to affirm his guess but was only met with silence. When nothing seemed to move after a few minutes, he decided to check up on his little guest. Maybe he had just changed his mind about his nightlight, but Hank operated along the lines of ‘better safe than sorry’. This motto had proved itself more than once during Hank’s career.

“Connor? Are you awake?”  
No sound from the bedroom, so he tried again:  
“Connor, can I come in?”  
After there was still nothing more than nightly quietness, Hank slowly opened the door, leaving a lot of time for objection. It didn’t come.

Connor was wide awake, at least there was no doubt about that. He sat upright on the bed, staring at him much like a deer caught in the headlines, but Hank didn’t have any intention of running him over.

“Hey, kid. What’s up? Couldn’t sleep?”  
A few torturous long seconds ticked by before the boy’s eyes flew down to his hands buried in the blanked and then quickly snapped back up.  
“I woke up.”

Hank tried to make his face look a bit softer than usual when he realised that Connor was still obviously intimidated by him.  
“I see. You don’t think you can go back to sleep?”

Experience told him that it was no use to try and make the kids go back to sleep. In the past it had proved effective to wrap them up in blankets, make some tea and sit on the sofa with them, dumb movie running in the background until exhaustion pulled them under again.

“I-“  
Hank was preparing to extend his usual offer when Connor surprised him.  
His voice was stilted again, like a kid attempting to pass as a grown up, just a bit weaker, a bit more scared. 

“I need to change the bedding. I apologise, if you could just point out where to find replacements....”   
Shame and embarrassment coloured his voice as well as his pale cheeks   
“I’ll take care of everything immediately. I’m so sorry.”

The kid wasn’t just scared, he was terrified. Hank could only assume that Connor hadn’t expected this to happen, hell, even he himself hadn’t seen it coming.

“It’s fine, nothing to be sorry about. It happens. Don’t worry, you go and freshen up, I’ll take care of the rest.”  
Connor didn’t move, so Hank walked over to the wooden drawer, rummaging through it to find a set of spare pyjamas he had stored there in case a kid couldn’t bring one.

“There you go. If you need anything else, call me. Or, you know, find me here.”

Finally the kid climbed out of the bed, damp pants visibly clinging to his thin legs but Hank pretended not to notice it. Connor fled to the bathroom without another word, his shoulders hunched up as if he could turn invisible that way.

Hank sighed to himself and started stripping off the bed. Thankfully, the mattress was fine, so the whole situation was dealt with in less time than it took Connor to return from the bathroom.   
Hank used the time to load the washing machine so that he would only need to add the soiled clothes later and be done with it.

For a minute he contemplated to get some tea or water for Connor before remembering that bed wetting could occur more than once per night, so he discarded the thought.

“I’m sorry, sir. I really am. I didn’t know that...”  
The boy had seemingly materialised behind him out of thin air, no one could move this soundlessly.  
“As I said, it’s fine. Accidents happen, no harm done. You go get comfortable, I’ll check on you after I put those” Hank took the discarded clothes from the boy “in the machine.”

~

Even after Connor nodded back off, the former lieutenant didn’t get anymore sleep that night. He thought about what he’d been told about the boy’s family life, analysed the bits of behaviour Connor had expressed in the short amount of time and of course how to best deal with all that in the morning.  
The only result of his musings was bone-deep tiredness that didn’t manage to get cured despite the steady stream of coffee that kept coming all morning.

Connor himself was still obviously upset about his accident, additionally to the natural vulnerability the situation called for. Hank tried everything he could think of to make the boy more comfortable, but in the end it was Sumo who accomplished the complicated task.

The Saint Bernhard’s gently nudged Connor until he eventually slid to the ground at some point after breakfast to pet him. The careful strokes turned into a gentle, more confident belly rub and from there they went to straight up cuddling in under one hour.  
Satisfied that his young charge managed to find a way to relax for a while, Hank called the child services to find out any news about Connors future situation.

~

Connor ended up staying with Hank until the following Tuesday, during which time he very slowly got coaxed out of his shocked and terrified state by a very patient Sumo.  
Saturday night Connor and Hank silently erased the evidence of another little accident, but after that the kid finally managed to get some uninterrupted rest.

When the boy left to be brought to his new foster home, he bid the big Saint Bernhard’s good bye with an obvious sign of sadness.

“If you want to, and your foster father doesn’t mind, you can come and visit Sumo some time.”

Words that were primarily meant to ease Connor’s transition from Hank into his new home actually led to the boy being the first of Hank’s emergency kids come back regularly.  
And surprisingly enough, both of them turned out to be very happy about that.   
At first the visits were solely about the big dog, but after a while Hank and Connor started to grow closer as well.

In the end Hank might not have been able to be Cole’s father for long, but instead he had been granted with the opportunity to be an important part of another kid’s life. 

No, Hank had no regrets becoming a foster parent.


End file.
